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Where are all the boars? An attempt to gain a continental perspective for Europe

As African Swine Fever (ASF) has increasingly become a virus of interest to national agriculture ministries and European policy makers such as European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). It becomes more important not only to be able to access data on livestock distributions but also on the occurance of wildlife reservoir species, in the case of this virus the distribution of wild boar (Sus scrofa) for example.

In 2015 the Environmental Research Group Oxford presented at the Genes, Ecosystems and Risk of Infection' (GERI 2015) Conference the results of a modelling exercise to create a first attempt at modelling wild boar distribution over continental Europe. The models attempt to model both presence and absence distributions and provide a basic index of abundance levels. Despite the peicemeal input data that was available to us at the time, the model has been well received in most quarters as a good first attempt.

The model methods and outputs were published in further detail within The Journal of Open Health Data. This is a data journal where the model outputs are freely available for download. Please link to the data article below to read in further detail and download the final models.

Alexander, N.S., Massei, G. & Wint, W., (2016). The European Distribution of Sus Scrofa. Model Outputs from the Project Described within the Poster – Where are All the Boars? An Attempt to Gain a Continental Perspective. Open Health Data. 4(1), p.e1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ohd.24